Paint colors often are displayed on color swatches mounted on a flat planar base which are joined together to form a deck or a fan deck with blades which are pivotally spread or fanned to display color. In the past, each blade in the deck had one or more color swatches which displayed one or more colors on one side of the blade. In order to display a large number of colors, either a plurality of individual swatches on each blade had to be made smaller or a larger number of individual blades with color swatches needed to be combined in a single deck. The resulting deck became rather large and cumbersome to transport and use.
Color display devices need to display colors attractively. The color displays on the individual fan blade color cards cannot be wrinkled and curled and swatches affixed to each side of the base of the blades must lay flat on the card or fan blades. In the past the flat planar mount base of the fan blade with swatches affixed thereto had to be fairly thick to avoid wrinkling and curling. This also increased the thickness of the fan with each blade displaying color only on one side of the fan blade. Further, it has been found that color swatches with paint coatings interfacing each other transferred color to the underlying or interfacing painted surface; hence, fan blades with color swatches on both sides risk transfer color to the underlying or interfacing blade surface. This is especially the case where dark colors transfer color to an underlying lighter colored painted surface.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,007,621 to Winter et al. addressed many of the problems described above by making a fan deck with blades which included painted polymeric film affixed to each side of the blade made of paper. The fan deck product described in the '621 patent provides a painted film/paper base/painted film laminate for each blade. However, to put paint directly onto both sides of a fan deck blade which is paper presents different problem from the laminated painted film/paper base/painted film blade described the Winter '621 patent. With a painted film/paper base laminate, opacity of the paper base blade/film was not a problem because white pigmented film could have paint applied thereon with the film providing a sufficiently opaque base for proper display of the paint. This made the film coated blade fairly easy to color match to the paint manufacturer's color. This color matching is critically important because (as is known) a manufacturer's paint generally is not used to make a color display product, but rather paint is custom made for the color display product. This custom paint then has to be color matched to the manufacturer's paint. Opacity, however, is not readily attained on a paper base, especially with certain colors. These colors include whites and light chromatic colors which have lower amounts of TiO2.
While a fan blade with paint coated film had advantages in providing a film with opacity which made color matching easier, making the film coated blade presented other problems. Those problems included, air bubbles forming under the film, wrinkles in the film, film deforming during manufacturing the painted film/paper base blades, registration problems in matching paint boarders on film on both sides of the paper base blade. All of the latter created risk of making the painted film/paper base/painted film laminate blade unattractive.
Fan blades painted on both sides also may have been made in the past with pigments which included heavy metals such as lead. These pigments were very heat tolerant and could withstand high drying temperature without discoloration. Use of such pigments is now not permitted in much of the industrialized world. While disuse of such pigments solved toxicity problems in the world of color display products, the use of pigments without heavy metals are less tolerant of heat and have created problems with discoloration with drying using heat or elevated temperatures.
Making a paper painted blade (a blade having paint directly applied to a sized paper base of the fan blade) while solving some of the above problems, presented other unique manufacturing problems. Opacity had to be obtained. Further, one side of the paper had to be sized, the sized blade paper dried, and then painted and then again dried in a drier to dry the paint. To achieve the proper finish for all types of paints (flat or gloss), each side of the paper blade has to be sized, and in an important aspect sized at least twice, then dried, then painted and dried again. Moreover, the reverse or other side of the paper blade also has to be sized, in an important aspect sized twice, the sizing dried then painted and then the paint dried. This required the painted paper to be passed through a paint drying oven twice and counting the oven which dries the sizing, the web is exposed to heat drying at least three times. This could deleteriously affect some colors which have unstable pigments. These colors include yellow, orange and red which have a tendency to burn, but are used to make many custom paints for color display products which custom paints need to be color matched with the colors of the manufacturer's paint.